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Emanuel Almborg is a photographer and filmmaker.

He is studying at the department of Fine Arts at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm.

His work has been exhibited at Le Festival d'HyŤres and he has made number of contributions to different magazines, among them a portfolio for Graphic that was art directed by Stefania Malmsten.

In autumn 2003 he published a magazine called Sakerna together with friends Andreas Bergman and Jeff Kinkle.

Q: How did you come up with the idea to do a magazine?

"It all started from a sense of fatigue. We were confused about our work perspectives and our whole life situations; photography, graphic design, girlfriends, parties - everything. We didn't really know in which direction to go, or why we should do anything at all. There was also this perception that everything has already been done. It was a general feeling of disillusionment; a feeling, we realized, that we shared with almost all our friends as well. Why not do something that took that feeling as a starting point? Be creative and talk about something that really mattered to us? Doing the magazine was a way to discuss and comment on a problem without actually solving it."

Q: What do you want to communicate with your pictures?

"One thing I always relate to is contradictions. In Sakerna sometimes you don't know if you like what you see or if it is just pathetic. What seems to be a perfect state of happiness could also be an expression of too much comfort, a lack of challenge. What are people doing in the pictures? And why? The fact that there is an ambiguity in the picture makes it interesting. Far too many pictures today are over-simplified just to fit the needs of the commercial market, to sell a dream on the cover of a magazine. In the end, we risk getting a distorted image of our reality, whatever that means. I believe that there is no single right definition of reality.

Q: Is reality the opposite of glamour?

"I don't want to embrace the vernacular or everyday life. I rather want to question it. When I started out there was a tendency to idealize the opposite of glamour. I used to look a lot at pictures of Wolfgang Tillmans for example. When I saw the title of his latest book, If One Thing Matters, Everything Matters, I realized that it represented a context that I don't want to be part of. Of course things matter! They have to. Why accept and embrace the conditions of life as they are? It has to do with power, political structures... Who would benefit from saying that nothing matters? You have to ask yourself that question."